Indiana Shuts Down Kellen Lewis

You can't win in college football without a few playmakers, and the Indiana Hoosiers just lost one of theirs. The team announced Wednesday that quarterback turned wide receiver Kellen Lewis is no longer part of the Hoosier football team. Lewis (right) was dismissed for the ever-classic "undisclosed violation of team rules."

This was not Kellen Lewis's first encounter with the UVOTR. He spent most of the past off-season under suspension as well, only to be reinstated just prior to fall practice. We didn't know what Lewis did back then, and we don't know what he did now, whether it was the same undisclosed violation, or a whole new one. It's clear, though, that IU's coaching staff had already lost a great deal of confidence in the one-time wunderkind.

Not only was Lewis no longer the starting quarterback, he wasn't even a quarterback any more. Ben Chappell had thoroughly supplanted him behind center. IU suffered mightily last year without a playmaking wideout like James Hardy, now of the Buffalo Bills. Moving Lewis to wide receiver seemed like an obvious solution, and it was starting to work. Terry Hutchens of the Indianapolis Star notes that Lewis and Chappell were beginning to hit their stride this spring, leaving IU fans to wonder what might have been.

But, of course, what might have been, wasn't and isn't and never shall be. This is far from the worst thing to happen to IU football in the past five years, but it's one more problem the Hoosiers didn't need. For as much as people like to hail on the Big Ten, wins are no easier to come by in that conference than they are in any other. Indiana's hopes of reclaiming some of the hope and success of the 2007 season just took a big hit yesterday. The fact that so much of that hope appeared to depend on one guy, however, indicates just how far Bill Lynch and his staff have to go yet.